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"general consensus among scientists as published in the Wall Street Journal in 1994 titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" shows a consensus among scientists that average IQ are as followed in America. Blacks 85. Whites 100. East Asians 106. Further studies done and published in science journals show IQ to be overwhelmingly genetic. Minnesota Twins Study by Dr. Thomas Bouchard, the most famous twin study done, shows that identical twins separated at birth are significantly more similiar in IQ than fraternal twins raised together with a genetic correlation of .80.

Cranial size studies show published in the science journal Intelligence 1997, 25, pg 15 shows the average cranial size as followed. Blacks 1,267 cm3. Whites 1347 cm3. East Asians 1364 cm3. The link between cranial size and intelligence are strongly established in several scientific studies published in journals. "Brain Size and Cognitive Ability" in the 1996 issue of the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review surveyed all the published research on this topic. It included studies that used the state-of-the-art technique known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which gives a very good image of the human brain. There were eight of these studies with a total sample size of 381 adults. The overall correlation between IQ and brain size measured by MRI is 0.44.

So why are Asians smarter? More specifically Northeast Asians? The scientific theories among scientists today hold the notion that the humans that left Africa 110,000 years ago into colder climates of Europe and Northern Asia required more thought and planning to obtain food than that of Africa. And that Northern Asia had more drastic temperatures than that of Europe. It's evolution at work.

The Bell Curve (1994) stated that the average IQ African Americans was 85; Latino 89; White 103; Asian 106; and Jews 113. Asians score relatively higher on visuospatial than on verbal subtests. The few Amerindian populations that have been systematically tested, including Arctic Natives, tend to score worse on average than white populations but better on average than black populations."
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-asians have higher IQs than whites who have higher IQs than blacks. but whites have more variability, which is why you see more white geniuses and retarded folk.
-blacks are better athletes. it probably goes with lower intelligence levels, higher physical levels, much like apes.
-the cranal studies show higher intelligence corresponds with larger brains, and blacks have smaller brains on average than other races
-modern humans are only two hundred thousand years old. we all came from africa. mitocondrial DNA studies verify this, and all the dating technicques. look at how much difference has come in terms of just different types of people, physically speaking. chinese v. africa v. european v. americas including south america and mexico. look at how their langauges vary so much. imagine how much IQ could change too. especially if the environmental factors are there, as quoted above. it's objectively verifiable, and brain sizes (and inteligence correltation) make it even more objectively verified.

When you say that whites are more intelligent than blacks, you are actually making the statement that "holding all else constant, a white person should be more intelligent than a black person."

Similarly, if you say that the treatment group had better survival rates than the experimental group, you are saying that the drug you gave the treatment group causes better survival rates, holding all else constant.

In a medical experiment, we hold all other factors constant by selecting people randomly. With random assignment and a large enough test group, the experimental and control groups should not differ. However, in sociological studies, we are often forced to use a theoretical control group.

For example, some people believe that charter schools are better than public schools. However, charter schools tend to accept a disproportionate number of disadvantaged students, so we cannot compare all public school students to all charter school students. Instead, Caroline Hoxby creates a theoretical control group. Charter schools hold a random lottery to determine who attends. Hoxby compares the students who won the lottery to those that lost (and thus attended a regular public school). The students who won the lottery performed significantly better. However, because the two groups had the same socioeconomic status, this study finally answered the question of whether charter schools were better.

In the same way, if we want to know if whites are truly more intelligent, we must control for income. There's an obvious reason: black people in many countries are NOT as poor as the black community in other countries. For example, blacks in the UK are wealthier, on average, than blacks in the US. They have thus achieved more IQ gains than blacks in the US. [1] In addition, recent black immigrants (from Africa) to the US have IQ's 15 points higher, on average, than the average white IQ in the US. [2]

So saying "blacks have lower intelligence" is a useless statement when it doesn't hold true in all countries or for different groups of black people. If you are on the Harvard campus, most of their black students are international students. Saying "blacks are less intelligent than whites" on the Harvard campus would not be an accurate statement.

Lastly, saying that blacks ARE lower intelligence is saying that lower intelligence is inherent to black people; it is an immutable trait. This is different from saying "blacks HAVE lower IQs, on average." My opponent thus sets up the burden of showing that blackness inherently imputes lower intelligence.

Regardless, my opponent should have the burden to prove that race CAUSES lower IQ, not merely that it correlates with lower IQ.

However, there's a few problems with this:

1) Income affects IQ

Higher income individuals have better nutrition and have better educational opportunities. It is not surprising that income significantly affects IQ. Blacks in the US and Africa have much lower average income than whites or Asians in the US. This explains the IQ gap.

A new study has proven that IQ is significantly linked to income. According to USA Today, "A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke." [3]

A study by Jelte M Wicharts et al concluded that "race differences in brain size, even if these were entirely of genetic origin, leave unexplained 91–95% of the black-white IQ gap . . . National IQs cannot be viewed solely in
evolutionary terms but should be considered in light of global differences in socio-economic development." [4]

A list of national IQ by country clearly reveals that national IQ correlates to national income and levels of income inequality. [5]

With rising income levels, black IQ scores are rising. According to Science Daily, the average IQ of blacks in Africa is rising due to rising living standards. [6] As incomes rise, Black IQ's in the US have gained 5.5 points against whites among both children and adults. [1] A study by Keita (2007) found that blacks that experienced the most desegregation saw the greatest increase in IQ scores. [1]

Thus, race does not cause low IQ.

2) IQ does not measure intelligence

"Research has shown that IQ test scores tend to correlate negatively with scores of practical intelligence (Sternberg, 2001, 2004). Practical intelligence can be described as a person's ability to apply learned skills and knowledge to everyday tasks. . . Empirical research has shown Practical intelligence to be a better predictor of numerous real life outcomes." [2]

This evidence shows that the higher the IQ, the lower someone's practical intelligence. This would mean blacks are more intelligent.

3) Cultural bias

The way an IQ test works is that it is "normed," which means that when IQ tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. However, IQ tests in the US were normed to white middle class test takers.

There are major cultural differences, however. For example, the SAT used to have cultural bias because its analogies section contained sailing terminology. 5 studies have found the IQ tests punish people unfamiliar with white middle class cultural tools and values (Richardson, 2000, 2002; Helms 1992, 1997; Barnes, 1972). [2] Blacks are also punished for using Ebonics on the test.

"Studies using sentence repetition tasks have found that at both third and fifth grades white subjects repeated Standard English sentences significantly more accurately than black subjects, while black subjects repeated nonstandard English sentences significantly more accurately than did white subjects (Marwit et al, 1977)." [2] If you remove differences in language usage, much of the IQ gap disappears.

In addition, if we norm the test to black test subjects, blacks perform better and whites perform poorer, according to two studies:

"Williams (1972) administered an intelligence test which happened to be normed on the African American population to group of white Americans to illustrate the effects of cultural bias, and norm referencing. In this study it was found that black Americans demonstrated a "clear superiority" of white Americans." [2]

"Lyman (1970) designed a cross cultural test called the "American Cross Culture Ethnic Nomenclature Test", or "ACCENT." The instrument contained 20 black biased and 20 white biased items. In one experiment this test was administered to 110 undergraduates (91 whites and 19 blacks) where it was found that the black participants out performed the white participants." [2]

Norming also includes racist undertones. On IQ tests and the SAT, if the "smart people" disproportionately get a question correct and the "dumb people" disproportionately get the question wrong, it is deemed a "good question" because it helps predict who is "smart" and "dumb." However, if test takers believe that blacks should score lower than whites, then any question that blacks disproportionately get correct and whites disproportionately get incorrect will be removed from the test as "not accurately predictive." This is how norming in standardized testing works, but it leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy for the black-white IQ gap.

"A study by Jelte M Wicharts et al concluded that "race differences in brain size, even if these were entirely of genetic origin, leave unexplained 91–95% of the black-white IQ gap . . . National IQs cannot be viewed solely in
evolutionary terms but should be considered in light of global differences in socio-economic development." [4]"

i concede this is an important point in favor of blacks not being as unintelligent as it might initially seem. brain size correlates very very strongly with intelligence, not just in humans. this does, however, prove pros assertion that whites are smarter than blacks, even if it's by say that 10% difference that this quote admits is explained by the brain size.

also, i've never tried to prove that whites are more intelligent over all, without regard to IQ or brain size... so i do not have the burden of prove that they are as con asserts. my title of my argument itself says that i am basing the measurements on IQ and brain size.
as a technical matter, i would have won that debate, because even most of cons arguments show that IQ is usually in the white favor. i concede that wealth might have some affect on IQ etc... but i never said we were measuring by anything than IQ, which seems to be in my favor, even if not completely accurate.

Pro drops my resolutional analysis that to prove that blacks ARE low intelligence, she must prove that this is an inherent (genetic) trait. The resolution does not say "possess."

In addition, if you wanted to say that charter schools are better than public schools, you need an apples-to-apples comparison, and thus you must hold constant socioeconomic status. The same holds true from saying that whites are more intelligent than blacks. You must hold constant other factors.

This is especially pernicious because if you conclude that whites ARE more intelligent, then every black person you see on the street would be likely to be less intelligent than any white person you see on the street. But this doesn't hold true for many areas of the country because there black populations are wealthier. And it doesn't hold true for OTHER countries, like the UK. My opponent did not make the resolution US specific, so she will lose unless she proves that low intelligence is caused by race because other countries have wealthier black populations.

In addition, I now advance a new argument from parliamentary debate. It's a theory argument: if a resolution is a tautology, meaning it is inherently true, then pro should lose for making an undebatable resolution. If the resolution is that on average, blacks in the US possess lower IQ's, then this is an indisputable fact and an undebatable resolution. Pro should be penalized on theory.

== Rebuttal ==

Smaller brain size is a result of poor nutrition. This is hardly a concession to pro.

I'll drop my argument about practical intelligence, since pro did specify "as measured by IQ," but she should need to prove that in an apples-to-apples comparison, whites are more intelligent than blacks. She cannot do this. She also cannot prove the resolution true for the UK. Since all of my arguments are dropped, Pro concedes that the IQ gap is caused entirely by income disparities.

Pro also drops that the way the tests are normed to the white middle class is what causes the IQ gap. Studies that norm the IQ test to a group of black test takers show that blacks have higher IQ's than whites. The norming argument wins me this debate even if you don't buy my resolutional analysis because it shows that the black-white IQ gap is 100% created by unfair norming practices and racism in deciding which are "good" questions and which are "bad" questions. Remember, if black people get a question disproportionately correct and whites miss it too often, it is thrown out as a bad question. Thus, IQ tests just become a self-fulfilling prophecy - that because we believe blacks are lower IQ, we norm the test so that they score below average.

Whether blacks have lower IQs than whites or asians isn't really up for debate as far as I know. The contentious issue is to what degree those differences are representative of social or genetic pressures.

You might want to post more debatable topics that aren't that one-sided if you want more people to accept. For example, you could make the topic "Black people aren't as smart as the other races", and even though it's racist you might get some contenders so you can use your medical studies later in the round. But when you post "Argue that these medical studies are wrong without a medical degree or any background whatsoever", it isn't as appealing.